"The BMB Firm" Vincents illustration and logo, Willy and I, Jess and my new business card.

As some of you may already know we did our first BMB Black Market Bacon and egg roll pop up hosted by our friends at Textbook Patisserie, John Ralley and Steven Anderson. Who we have collaborated with on other projects, and continue to do so with a very exciting "Bacon Festival" stay tuned to my social media pages to see more details.

Steven took some time developing the style of bun I wanted,he was able to achieve a fantastic mouth feel, I didn’t want a bun that was too tough or too soft, it couldn’t be overly sweet and needed enough integrity to hold up against the other components of the roll.Everything about this bacon and egg roll was special, for starters the bacon was cured in the old fashioned English way, dry cured and cold smoked, almost the same way that people have been doing it since the middle ages, obviously with refrigeration and a controlled smoking chamber.

Last batch of testers, they say: Rome wasn't built in a day

I got to wear many different hats.... I even had a go at flyer making

The flour had been smoked for the buns, this gives them a beautiful savoury flavour and makes them really special. It is an ongoing project that peaked my interest when I first built the smoker, and felt the need, to make a beautiful pane de campaign, country style loaf. before I go into too much detail, I will be doing a blog on this in the next couple of weeks.

I wanted to have a sweet and spicy note for my relish, after eating one of my favourite bacon and egg rolls at my friends café sagebrush and silver, definitely the best cafe you'll never eat at! But I didn’t want to rip off their filling, I wanted to take the concept and make it my own and obviously tie in with my English roots somewhere along the way. So I got to work perfecting my spiced mango relish, this took a couple of attempts before I struck the right balance of sweet, savoury, acidic and spicy to really excited the palate and separate my roll from the thousands on offer in Sydney!

This was accompanied by an old favourite of mine a house made Japanese style mayonnaise to bring it all together, and really get people hooked.

Jimmi Prilis and I, going through the art of design and printing, a wealth of knowledge that taught me so much and made an awesome T-shirt.

The day was a success we had over 100 buns, and almost sold out by 11.30 so we started using the smoked sourdough loaves instead! I was touched by the encouragement of our friends and families who came down and showed support, and especially those who helped out before the event. So I would like to thank, Jimmi Prilis the mind behind Zois Embroidery, who spent a lot of time with me developing and printing our amazing T-Shirt's, Vincent De Gouw owner of Adgraphics and our neighbour and world class artist, made a beautiful illustration of my bacon and developing a new logo for the BMB business. William Maitland for the first professional photo of my bacon, which has been used for my business cards and now turned into a piece of art. The boys Steven and John Textbook Patisserie for helping to make this vision come to reality.

Of course none of this would have been possible without my 2 helpers on the day, both of which have supported, and offered me guidance leading up to this event, on many occasions prior and I’m sure for many years to come, they were my good friend Wellington (Willy) Takakura and my beautiful partner, Jessica Pedemont.

Thanks for reading and stay posted to see what the next big event will be!